It is a well known fact in nautical circles that many vessels sink on the high seas, and even sink alongside docks while those persons on board are asleep or otherwise uncognizant of the fact that the boat has leakage problems. The loss of property as well as lives from these incidents could almost always have been avoided had the persons on board been aware that the vessel was leaking before it was too late to do anything about it prior to capsizing.
Applicant's invention is directed toward sensing the water level in the bilge or other compartment of a boat and providing an accurate signal to a utilization means such as an alarm or bilge pump in the event water exceeds a certain level in the bilge.
Applicant is certainly not the first to address himself to this problem, and the literature, including issued patents, is replete with examples of other devices of various types utilizing different principles to sense a fluid level and sound an alarm or activates a pump in case of danger. Some of these devices utilize hinged floats or other moving parts which tend to corrode or otherwise become fouled in the marine environment and become unreliable, an occurrence that is often discovered too late. A few sensor units have been designed with no moving parts, utilizing the conductivity of the fluid to be sensed in contact with probes to activate the emergency systems. Applicant's sensor is of this type and provides a unique and well-designed three-probe sensor unit defining two triggering levels, the unit being especially designed to resist the corrosion and weather abuse that the sensor is susceptible to, and in addition, by the provision of a special water repellent material around the electrical probe elements, the likelihood of false alarms and undue emergency equipment operation resulting from the coating of the prongs with bilge debris is minimized. In addition, the system of alarms that applicant operates utilizing this sensor provides extremely low current in the microamp range for the detection of water in the bilge, thus eliminating any chance whatsoever of a spark-produced fire aboard the vessel despite the possible presence of floating fuel in the bilges.